


broken by my own hand (put back together by yours)

by gwenoakley



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Irondad, Ironfamily, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Precious Peter Parker, This is so soft, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, based on my own expirences, i will always love their relationship, idk her, tony stark deserves the entire world, tw: accidental self harm, what is canon?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 02:37:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21468691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenoakley/pseuds/gwenoakley
Summary: "For the first time he realizes how perfectly the kid fits into his life. In his arms, against his chest, under his chin, in his entire world."
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 30
Kudos: 429





	broken by my own hand (put back together by yours)

**Author's Note:**

> i've wanted to write about tony and his PTSD/anxiety for about six months. turns out it took me actually being diagnosed with PTSD to make it finally work the way i always wanted. i'm very proud of this fic, especially because it brought my brother to tears (in a good way). hope you enjoy. :)

It’s an anger that swells up with no warning, crashing over him like a tidal wave, dragging him into a red, flaming abyss. It’s grief that slices into his mind, digging into his most cherished memories and tainting them with everything he’s lost. It’s depression that swallows him whole, leaving him gasping, unable to breathe as he fights back tears that threaten to spill over at any moment.

Usually he can swallow it back, burying it as deep as he can. He doesn’t have a choice; he has to keep himself moving. He can’t risk falling back into that place again, riddled with memories of Steve slamming the shield into his arc reactor, of falling from space, of being waterboarded in a cave in Afghanistan. He feels it poking at him, taunting him, a constant whisper in his ear. But he keeps working, keeps going, even as it persists.

The insomnia is bad enough, but combined with the attack looming over his shoulder, he doesn’t sleep for days. He can’t, because he knows sleep will bring back every nightmare he’s had to live through, so he just holes up in his lab with gallons of coffee and hundreds of projects, and he tries to keep himself upright.

But it sneaks up on him. Every second it digs a little deeper and Tony knows it’s coming, he _knows_ it, but he still doesn’t stop to acknowledge it, to work through it like any normal person would. He remembers when Pepper would sneak in, her voice soft and her touch soothing as she rubbed at the knots at the base of his neck, whispering, “Just breathe, Tony. You’re okay. You’re safe.” And then it’d hit him that he _wasn’t_ breathing, that he thought he was back in Siberia, in Afghanistan, in a black hole millions of miles above New York, but her voice, as melodic as always, brought him back, grounded him, silenced the voice and made him finally relax, safe with the woman he loved more than anything else.

But now Pepper is gone, Steve is gone, the Avengers have broken up, and Tony is alone.

As a mechanic, Tony lives with one thought—_I have to fix this. I have to._

And maybe he couldn’t fix the so-called Civil War, or his relationship with Pepper, or every battle he thought he won, every time he thought he was doing the right thing, but in his lab he surrounds himself with blueprints and tools and builds whatever he can, even as he can feel himself falling apart.

His breathing speeds up; his vision blurs; his hands shake uncontrollably. He grits his teeth, scrubs at his eyes, squeezes his hands into fists in a desperate urge to stop the shakes, but deep in his chest, he knows. Every time he blinks he sees every horror dancing behind his eyelids and he’s powerless to stop them.

“No, no, no,” he hisses under his breath as he tightens his grip on the wrench he’s holding. “Dammit, come on—”

Tony has been broken for his entire life, only held together by duct tape and safety pins, and the hope that, as Iron Man, he’s doing something right in the world. But nowadays people just see his failures, both in the suit and out. To most of the public, he is anything but a hero, and it adds another wound to his battered body.

Most days he thinks of all his scars, all the pain he’s had to suffer through, and he wonders if it’s worth it to keep going.

The Iron Man suit used to hide his pain, but now it only seems to add to it.

Struggling to keep his breathing even, Tony reaches across the table to grab his coffee mug, but his elbow knocks a bucket of bolts onto the floor, sending them spilling everywhere.

Something snaps.

The tidal wave rushes up; the claws pierce; the hole opens up.

He breaks, all at once.

A scream tears out of his throat, full of so much pain and anguish he’s tried to ignore for weeks, and he chokes, standing up too fast and stumbling over his stool, which crashes to the ground. He can’t keep himself upright and he falls to his knees, gasping, tears spilling down his cheeks as he roars again.

He can’t do this.

He picks up a lost hammer and throws it across the room. It digs itself into the wall and Tony presses his palm against the floor, tries to find anything to ground himself to because _he’s falling, again, he’s drowning, he’s dying,_ but the cold tile doesn’t do anything, it’s not Pepper’s hand, always so smooth and soft, it’s nothing. He is left with nothing.

He can’t feel anything. The numbness spreads through his entire body, paralyzing him like a poison, and he feels himself sinking, the darkness pressing down on his entire being. He isn’t here. He’s gone, again, _and no one is going to find him, he’s lost—_

“Mr. Stark?”

He chokes on another inhale, his throat burning, still buried in blackness that he can’t escape. He feels something land on his shoulder and he gasps, jerking back, but finally his vision starts to clear at the edges, and he collapses again, breathing heavily. 

“Mr. Stark, it—it’s me. It’s Peter. You’re safe, okay? Just breathe, please, you need to breathe.”

Peter. _Peter._

He blinks rapidly as the darkness gives way to reality—the cold white tile, the hammer dug into the far wall, the bolts scattered all around him… and right in front of him, his messy-haired, slightly panicked kid, still in his suit, mask held loosely in his hand.

Peter smiles shakily when Tony finally raises his gaze to his. “Hi,” he whispers.

“Kid—what—“ He’s still wheezing slightly, trembling as he fights to get himself under control again.

“FRIDAY let me in,” Peter says. “You told me to stop by after patrol, remember? And I came in and you… you weren’t breathing, and your arms—“

“My arms?” Tony frowns. “There’s nothing—“ He looks down and his mouth snaps shut with an audible click when he sees the sluggish rivulets of blood sliding down his arms. “What the fuck is this?” he asks bluntly. 

Peter swallows thickly, his eyes filling with tears. “You were clawing at them, Mr. Stark. I… I couldn’t get you to stop, and then you started punching the floor, and—I didn’t want you to hurt me, so I couldn’t even help you. I’m so sorry, Mr. Stark, I’m sorry—“

“Woah, wait. Pete, stop for a second.” Finally he is back in control, and now he has a freaked-out kid to take care of. He sits up straighter and puts his hand on the side of Peter’s face, his thumb slowly stroking the side of his jaw. “I would never hurt you,” he says, his voice strong and secure, albeit wavering slightly with the pain of realization that Peter thought _at all_ that Tony would ever hurt him. “Okay? Never. I’m gonna keep you safe. That’s my job, remember?”

Peter’s jaw trembles beneath his grip and Tony notices his hands for the first time, raw and bloody from apparently punching the floor—the usually immaculate tile is now spattered with blood where he knelt just moments before. His heart aches and he wants, more than anything, to go back in time and make sure Peter never had to see him go through that. “It was just an attack,” Tony murmurs. “It happens sometimes, although this—“ He gestures lamely at his busted knuckles and scratched up arms, “is new. But Peter, I swear to you I was never going to hurt you. You don’t have to be afraid of me, kiddo, you know that. Please.”

In the back of his head, the whisper returns. _You wouldn’t have known it was him. You would’ve been so lost in the memories, the nightmares that you wouldn’t have been able to tell Peter apart from everyone who’s hurt you, and you could’ve very well snapped, hurt this precious kid in front of you without even being truly awake—_

He shakes his head and gently presses his thumb into the soft spot right below Peter’s ear, trying to soothe him because he can feel how hard he’s trying not to cry. “I’m okay, Underoos,” he whispers.

He’s not sure if it’s the assurance or the nickname that breaks the dam, but Peter’s face screws up and he immediately closes the gap between them, throwing himself into Tony’s arms. His arms wind around his neck and he presses his face into Tony’s collarbone, tears soaking his skin.

Tony pulls the kid closer against his chest without any hesitation, burying one hand in his curls and rubbing up and down his spine with the other. The drying blood on his arms makes him wince but it doesn’t seem to bother Peter in the slightest as burrows deeper into Tony’s embrace. 

The feeling makes his heart ache. Peter truly thought that Tony, in his PTSD haze, was going to hurt him, but still he finds comfort and safety in his arms. Sighing heavily, he presses his nose into Peter’s unruly hair and promises he’ll never raise a finger against the child he’s holding.

His eyes scan the room. There’s the hammer in the wall, the bolts on the floor, the blood on the tile. But there’s also Peter’s worn sneakers by the door, his backpack hanging off the chair, his page of doodles from their last late-night lab session on the table. And for the first time he realizes how perfectly the kid fits into his life. In his arms, against his chest, under his chin, in his entire world.

Peter is a balm for all his pain. Every horrid memory, every wound on his body, everything that seems to hurt him on a daily basis vanishes in his kid’s presence. When he talks his ear off about that mean girl he’s hopelessly in love with, or the new Star Wars movie, or something that happened in school, or when he rambles on about a new idea he has for his suit that he wants to work on, or when he’s struggling and goes straight to Tony to put him back together.

Just by being himself, Peter is saving him. 

Blinking back the moisture in his eyes, Tony holds him even tighter, and finally, he is able to breathe.

After a few minutes, Peter quiets, shifting slightly in his grasp so he can rest his head on his chest. The movement fills Tony’s veins with affection, as strong as a drug. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you earlier,” he whispers. “I… I shouldn’t have been so scared.”

“Oh, Peter,” Tony murmurs emotionally, kissing his forehead. “This wasn’t your fault. It’s not your job to take care of me.”

“But you shouldn’t have to do this alone!” Suddenly Peter pushes himself up and stares at him, his eyes bright with a mix of anger and heartache. “You—you’re hurt, Mr. Stark. And you deserve to have someone take care of you.” He bites his lip and stands up, reaching his hand out to Tony who’s blinking at him, bewildered. “Will you let me?” he asks. 

Tony has lived through things most people could never even begin to imagine, and still, this might be the first time he’s ever truly been rendered speechless—seeing a fifteen-year-old superhero offering to fix him after he’s destroyed himself thanks to a PTSD attack. He swallows and it takes him a moment to find his voice. “I’ll be okay, kid, really,” he says. “Not the first time this has happened.”

“You said yourself that this is the first time you’ve hurt yourself, though,” Peter points out, and damn, does Tony regret admitting that now. “You can’t act like everything is fine when your arms are covered in blood and there’s a hammer in the wall.”

Well, fuck. “Peter—“

“Tony.”

The shock of Peter using his first name erases everything he was going to say and he stops, staring up at him. Peter smiles weakly and reaches down to take his hand. “Come on,” he whispers. “I’ll even use those Spider-Man band-aids you got.”

A weak chuckle surprises itself out of Tony and finally he forces himself to his feet, fingers tightening around Peter’s. “Alright, fine. But only because you promised the band-aids. Gotta rep my love for my kid.”

Peter grins, that sparkle in his eyes finally returning. “And then we’re ordering pizza,” he says as he leads Tony down the hall to the bathroom.

“Sounds like a plan,” Tony says as he obediently follows the kid’s lead. The hallway seems to stretch on for longer than normal and his legs tremble slightly under the exertion.

For the first time in weeks, he realizes how truly exhausted he is, and he just wants to sleep. 

Peter turns the bathroom light on and Tony winces, the brightness pulling him back into reality. Even when the worst of the attack has passed, he usually floats—as Pepper has started calling it—between real life and memories for a few hours afterwards. He wonders if Peter realized that he was gone at all.

“Alright,” the kid says. He sounds so _adult,_ making Tony want to shrivel up in embarrassment. This isn’t right. He squeezes his hand gently, tugging him into the room. “Sit down for a second, okay?”

He knows there’s no point in protesting—despite not being a Stark by blood, Peter still somehow possesses that telltale stubbornness that his family’s always had, but he still feels awful as he watches Peter grab everything he needs. He sinks down onto the edge of the bathtub and selfishly wishes he was capable of taking care of himself.

Peter dumps some bandages—to wrap his hand with and the box of Spider-Man band-aids he promised for his arms—hydrogen peroxide, and a washcloth onto the closed toilet seat and kneels down in front of Tony. His heart twists and bleeds and he wants to _run._

His kid deserves so, so much better.

He never wanted this. He never wanted Peter to become such a huge part of his life, because he knows he doesn’t deserve him. He doesn’t deserve this heroic, funny, nerdy, sweet, incredibly wholesome kid, but a selfish part of him still wants him right here. He needs something solid as the love Peter has for him.

He thinks of his father.

He thinks of the whiskey on Howard’s breath, of his bruising grip on his arms, of the constant fights, the disgusted words he’d hurl at him in a fit of rage. How Tony was such a disappointment to the Stark name, how he was always seen as a disgrace.

Tony’s always known that he never wanted kids, because he knew, deep down, that Howard’s abuse was hiding in his blood, a curse he couldn’t escape. But without even knowing it, he was given a son. Life sent him a fifteen-year-old wall-crawling superhero, and it changed his life.

As much as he wants to run from the love, the affection Peter is giving him, he knows he can’t abandon him. Peter’s chosen him, latched onto him like an octopus, and he knows he’s never letting go.

And Tony doesn’t want to.

“Okay,” Peter murmurs, taking Tony’s ruined hand in his smaller one. He probes gently at his knuckles, pulling away when he winces in pain. “Doesn’t feel like anything’s broken,” he says. “Just need to wrap them, maybe ice them for the night.”

He doesn’t let go of Tony’s hand as he leans back over to grab his supplies. He takes a thing of gauze and pours a tiny amount of rubbing alcohol on it. He meet Tony’s gaze again, eyes soft and sympathetic. “This is gonna hurt,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Tony says, gently squeezing Peter’s hand. “Really, kiddo, you—you’re doing so much for me. Thank you.”

There’s a hint of something in his voice as he speaks, and then it hits him. It’s love. His voice is dripping with love for this kid in front of him, stronger than anything he’s felt in months, since Pepper decided their relationship wasn’t worth it, since the man he thought was his friend abandoned him in a freezing cold cave, limping away with the man who slaughtered his parents.

Peter blinks. Swallows. And then he bows his head and whispers, “I love you.”

Tony stops breathing.

The silence stretches between them and it apparently ruins the moment because Peter flinches and turns away, turning red. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Just—forget it. I’m sorry.”

“No, Pete—” His voice is shaking, but he doesn’t want him to think that his lack of response was a bad thing. “Don’t apologize. It’s okay.”

“It—it was the wrong thing to say,” Peter mumbles, curling in deeper on himself. “I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t.” Tony closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath. He’s always been afraid of the word ‘love,’ but god damn it, Peter deserves to hear it. “I love you, too, kiddo.”

His head snaps up, eyes wide and moist with unshed tears. “R-really?”

“Yeah, baby,” Tony whispers, the term of affection slipping past his lips before he realizes. “Of course I do.”

Peter’s lower lip wobbles, and Tony’s heart swells. “Christ, come here,” he breathes, reaching forward and taking the kid in his arms. Immediately he melts into his embrace, burrowing into his chest like the child he is. “I love you so much, squirt,” he murmurs into his soft curls. “I’m here, okay? I’m not leaving.”

He’s not going to leave. Deep in his heart he vows to never abandon Peter.

“You’re stuck with me,” he says, a slight teasing note in his voice, and fondness courses through his entire being when Peter chokes on a laugh.

They stay like that for a moment longer, breathing in tandem, until finally, Peter pulls away and rubs his eyes. “Okay,” he says, straightening up again. He reaches for the gauze and tenderly swipes it over Tony’s wounds. He hisses in a breath between his teeth at the contact but smiles gently at Peter when he looks up at him heartbreakingly. He tosses the gauze into the small trash can and slowly unrolls the bandages. “Let me know if it’s too tight, okay?”

Tony nods and Peter gently wraps his hand. When he finishes, he strokes his thumb over his palm and whispers, “Do you need some ice or anything?”

Tony shakes his head. He’s truly not sure what to say anymore, but another part of him wonders they even need words anymore. Through every touch, they are communicating everything they need to say.

I love you.

You’re okay.

I’m proud of you.

I’m so glad you’re here.

Peter’s fingers tighten around his hand again as he tugs his arm down to examine the cuts. He reaches for the damp washcloth and slowly strokes it up and down his arm. The dried blood sticks to his skin and hurts a little bit when Peter washes it off, but he doesn’t make a sound as the kid slowly, almost reverently, removes all traces of red from his arm.

When all the blood is gone, Tony realizes, with a soft exhale, that the cuts aren’t deep. “Just need the Spider-Man band-aids,” Peter says softly, a small smile playing on his lips. He opens the box and every band-aid, one by one, sticking them over all the cuts. When he’s done, his arm is a mosaic of love for his superhero kid and the rush of warmth leaves him breathless.

“I love it, Pete,” he says.

Peter grins. He is absolute sunshine, Tony thinks. He sees the entire universe in his sparkling brown eyes, freckles sprinkling his cheeks like stars, love emanating from him like sunlight on a perfect summer day. “You’re such a nerd,” he says.

Tony laughs. “Says the kid who knows every Star Wars movie by memory.”

“You suck,” Peter says, but Tony hears the truth behind his words. _You’re the best. The coolest._

“You love me,” Tony teases, poking his nose.

Peter giggles, ducking away. “Stooooop,” he whines.

Tony doesn’t. Instead, he leans forward and engulfs the kid in his arms. Hearing him laugh, pressing his face into his neck, fills Tony with the most exquisite joy.

Maybe, he thinks, he is cut out to be a dad after all.

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a review. :)


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